JP2019030853A - Shaft body inspection separating device - Google Patents

Abstract

To perfectly solve a concerned problem such that a defective article is contaminated into good articles when increasing an inspection speed in an inspection separating device which adopts a belt conveyor having an endless round belt.SOLUTION: A shaft body inspection separating device comprises: a belt conveyor 2 having a pair of left and right endless round belts 21R, 21L which are arranged in parallel; an inspection part 3 which discriminates quality of a shaft body transported by the conveyor; lighting equipment 4; a determination circuit 5; two sets of air blow devices 8, 9 whose air jet directions are different from each other. The air blow device 9 is located in a direction in which a shaft body, which has been determined as a defective article, is so blown as to be flown to a defective article recovery part 11 from a top toward a bottom. Further, this inspection separating device comprises a false separation detection device 12 which detects false separation of the shaft body which has been determined as a defective article, and stops whole operation of the device at the time of occurrence of said false separation.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 2

Description

  The present invention is an inspection / separation apparatus for a shaft body that performs a pass / fail inspection on the shaft body while conveying the shaft body in a state of being suspended by an endless round belt conveyor, and distributes a non-defective product and a defective product (so-called OK product and NG product). About.

  A pair of endless round belts (in the present invention, an endless wire is also considered as a kind of endless round belt) are arranged in parallel, and the pair of endless round belts are run to make heads such as bolts, screws, nails, connecting pins, rivets, etc. 2. Description of the Related Art A round belt conveyor is known in which a shaft body with a flange and a shaft body having a flange on the outer periphery are suspended and conveyed.

  The round belt conveyor supports the head and flange of the shaft body with a pair of endless round belts, suspends the shaft body by inserting the shaft body between the pair of endless round belts, and in this state, exits from the entrance of the conveyor. The shaft body is conveyed toward

  An inspection / sorting device for a shaft body that arranges a non-defective product and a defective product according to a determination result by a determination circuit, for example, the following Patent Documents 1 and 2 Has been proposed by.

  The inspection / separation apparatus described in this document combines a pair of endless round belts, a driving pulley and a driven pulley that span each of the pair of endless round belts, and a tension pulley that adjusts the tension of each endless round belt. Therefore, there is an advantage that the conveyor can be configured at low cost.

  Moreover, since the endless round belt is used as the carrier, it is easy to increase the processing speed.

  In order to separate good and defective products in such inspection / separation equipment, normally, the shaft discharged from the conveyor after the inspection is blown with air, and the direction of the blow-off is changed so that the non-defective product is returned to the non-defective product recovery section. The method of taking in each defective product collection part is taken.

Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-71310 JP 2011-219253 A

  Regarding the inspection sorting apparatuses disclosed in Patent Documents 1 and 2 and the like, there is an increasing demand for further speeding up of the pass / fail inspection by taking advantage of the ability to easily increase the number of processes per unit time.

  However, in the inspection and separation device that employs an endless round belt conveyor as the conveying means, the shaft body that has been inspected is discharged from the exit of the conveyor where only one non-defective product and one defective product are discharged. Therefore, there is a concern that a defective product may be mixed into a non-defective product due to a deviation in the timing of blowing.

  The operation of reliably distributing the non-defective product and the defective product by blowing the shaft body discharged from one outlet with air becomes more difficult as the number of inspections of the shaft body per unit time increases (the processing speed increases).

  For example, if the object to be inspected is a small screw, about 740 to 1400 inspections per minute are possible. In this case, about 12 to 23 shafts are discharged from the conveyor outlet in 1 second. Is done.

  When air blowing separation is used for such high-speed inspection, defective products may not be correctly collected by the defective product collection unit due to slight timing deviation of air injection.

  In the conventional inspection separation device, the upper limit processing speed when air blow-off separation is correctly performed is checked from the past inspection results, and the inspection is performed within the range of the processing speed. When the speed is increased, there is a concern that the shaft body determined to be defective flows into the non-defective product collecting unit due to a difference in the timing of the blowing.

  For this reason, the actual situation is that the demand for increasing the inspection speed is not satisfied satisfactorily. Especially for parts such as automobiles and industrial machines that influence safety, it is necessary to improve the inspection speed by ignoring the previous concerns because all products shipped must be non-defective products.

  The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned present state of the art, and is a concern in an inspection separation apparatus employing a belt conveyor having an endless round belt. The task is to eliminate the problem completely.

In order to solve the above-described problems, in the present invention, each of the shafts has a pair of left and right endless round belts arranged in parallel and driven in the same direction, spanned between a plurality of pulleys. The shaft or the outer peripheral flange of the shaft is placed on the pair of endless round belts, and the neck or body of the shaft is sandwiched between the pair of endless round belts and conveyed. A belt conveyor, an inspection section provided in the middle of the length of the belt conveyor, a lighting fixture disposed above the inspection section, and a determination circuit for determining the quality of a shaft body inspected based on information from the inspection section; And two sets of air blow devices with different air injection directions arranged at the outlet of the belt conveyor,
Based on the determination result of the determination circuit, the operating state of the two air blow devices is switched, and a good judgment shaft body is used as a non-defective product collection unit and a defective judgment shaft body is used as a defective product collection unit. The inspection / sorting device for the shaft body to be blown was configured as follows.
That is, one of the air blow devices is arranged in such a direction that the defective shaft body is blown from the top to the bottom at the exit of the conveyor. An erroneous sorting detection device is provided that stops all operations of the device when sorting occurs.

  The misclassification detection device additionally includes a sensor for detecting the presence or absence of passage of the shaft in the middle of a path for moving the shaft body, which has been determined to be defective, to the defective product collecting unit. It may be determined that a misclassification has occurred when a detection signal is not output in a situation where a body is to be detected.

  Such a shaft body inspection / separation apparatus preferably includes a mechanism for adjusting the distance between the pair of endless round belts.

  The inspection and sorting apparatus according to the present invention detects that the shaft body determined to be defective has not been collected by the defective product collecting unit, and stops all operations.

  If the shaft body determined to be defective is not recovered by the defective product recovery unit to be recovered and the device stops due to this, the shaft body determined to be defective was erroneously recovered by the non-defective product recovery unit (misclassified You may think.

  In this case, it is not easy to visually find a defective product that is mixed in a number of good products. However, this problem can be solved by re-inspecting all the inspected shafts collected in the non-defective product collection unit.

  If the re-inspection is performed at the same speed as the inspection speed when misclassification occurs, there is a possibility that mis-separation will occur again. It is preferable to carry out at a speed that can be reliably avoided (a speed that is the upper limit in the past inspection or a speed that is lower than that).

  The upper limit of the speed in the past inspection is, for example, about 750 per minute in the case of a screw having M4 and a neck length of about 15 mm.

  Strictly speaking, the situation where a good product is taken into the defective product collection unit is also misclassified, but the problem is that the defective product is taken into the good product collection unit. It is not particularly necessary to detect that the data has been taken in.

  As described above, according to the inspection sorting apparatus of the present invention, the inspection sorting apparatus stops when an erroneous sorting occurs. Therefore, it is possible to know the occurrence of misclassification and perform a re-inspection to reliably prevent a defective product from being mixed with a non-defective product.

  In addition, since the occurrence of misclassification is known, the inspection speed can be made faster than the conventional upper limit speed set in anticipation of safety.

  For example, in the case of the screw having the length of about M4 and the neck length of about 15 mm, it is conceivable to increase the inspection amount per minute to about 1000.

  Note that if the frequency of re-inspection is high, the time required for inspection of all products may be longer than the current time. It is better to make it only once by dropping to the vicinity of the upper limit value).

  It is also possible to reduce the total number of shafts in the non-defective product collection unit when re-inspection is required by periodically transferring the inspected good product collected in the good product collection unit to another container. (This shortens the inspection time of all products).

It is a top view which shows an example of the test | inspection separation apparatus of this invention. It is a side view of the test | inspection separation apparatus of FIG. It is an enlarged side view which shows the principal part of the test | inspection separation apparatus of FIG. FIG. 4 is a view taken along line XX in FIG. 3. It is an expanded sectional view which shows an example of the support of the shaft body in the entrance / exit part of a belt conveyor.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Embodiments of a shaft body inspection / separation apparatus according to the present invention will be described below with reference to FIGS.

  As shown in FIG. 1 and FIG. 2, the inspection / separation apparatus 1 for an exemplary shaft body includes a belt conveyor 2, an inspection unit 3 and a lighting device 4 provided in the longitudinal direction of the belt conveyor, and information from the inspection unit 3. It has the determination circuit 5 which determines the quality of the shaft body inspected based on it.

  Also, there are an inlet sensor 6 and an outlet sensor 7 for detecting the shaft body A, two sets of air blow devices 8 and 9 arranged at the outlet of the belt conveyor 2, a non-defective product collecting unit 10 and a defective product collecting unit 11. In addition, an erroneous classification detection device 12 characterizing the present invention is provided.

  A parts feeder (not shown) is arranged on the upstream side of the belt conveyor 2, and the shaft body A supplied in alignment from the parts feeder is received by the belt conveyor 2 and conveyed.

  The belt conveyor 2 includes a pair of left and right endless round belts 21R and 21L arranged in parallel, and a traveling drive mechanism 22 for each endless round belt 21R and 21L.

  The travel drive mechanism 22 includes a drive pulley 22a and a plurality of driven pulleys 22b and 22c that individually wrap the endless round belts 21R and 21L, and a motor (not shown) that is a rotational drive source of the two drive pulleys 22a. A combination of rotary encoders (also not shown) associated with each motor is provided.

  The driven pulley 22b is on the inlet side and the outlet side of the belt conveyor 2, and the driven pulley 22b on the inlet side (left end side in FIG. 1) is also used as a tension pulley for adjusting the tension of the endless round belts 21R and 21L. It has become.

  The driving pulley 22a and the driven pulley 22b are grooved pulleys provided with grooves on the outer periphery for the endless round belts 21R and 21L.

  The driven pulley 22c is located at the turning point between the forward path and the return path of the conveyance path constituted by the endless round belts 21R and 21L.

  As shown in FIG. 5, the driven pulley 22c at the turning point is a pulley provided with a V-groove for hanging the belt biased toward the outer peripheral side, and the endless round belt 21R, 21L is hung on the V-groove. The upper ends of the belts 21R and 21L are designed to be above the upper surface of the driven pulley 22c.

  As a result, the shaft body A can be transported such that the head and flange thereof do not interfere with the driven pulley 22c.

  In this travel drive mechanism 22, a member involved in driving one endless round belt 21R is placed on the stationary frame 13 whose position is fixed, and a member involved in driving the other endless round belt 21L is placed in one endless round belt 21R. They are arranged on a movable frame 14 that can be moved toward and away from each other.

  Between the fixed frame 13 and the movable frame 14, there is provided an interval adjusting mechanism 15 that slides the movable frame 14 to vary the interval between the two frames.

  The interval adjusting mechanism 15 can cope with the size variation of the shaft body A to be inspected by changing the interval between the pair of endless round belts 21R and 21L.

  The illustrated travel drive mechanism 22 includes a controller 22d that controls the travel speed of the other endless round belt 21L based on the travel speed of one endless round belt 21R.

  In the illustrated inspection / separation apparatus 1, the pair of endless round belts 21R and 21L are synchronized so as not to cause a speed difference. When the pair of endless round belts 21R and 21L are run with a speed difference, the shaft body A with the neck portion sandwiched between the pair of endless round belts 21R and 21L rotates, and this rotation causes the displacement of the workpiece. Cause. In order to avoid this problem, the pair of endless round belts 21R and 21L are driven at a constant speed.

  The illustrated shaft body A has a head. The shaft body A with the head is placed on the pair of endless round belts 21R and 21L, and is transported while being supported in a suspended state. The shaft body to be inspected may be a pin having a flange on the outer periphery in the middle of the longitudinal direction. Such a shaft body has the outer flange mounted on the endless round belts 21R and 21L and the body portion of the endless round belt. It is sandwiched between 21R and 21L and supported in a suspended state.

  The inspection unit 3 includes a camera 3a disposed in the middle of the conveyance path of the belt conveyor 2, and a backlight 3b facing the camera 3a with the conveyance path interposed therebetween. In addition, a luminaire 4 is installed to illuminate the shaft passing through the inspection section from above. The lighting fixture 4 uses a ring-shaped lamp that illuminates the entire outer periphery of the head of the shaft body A.

  The camera 3a images the shaft A passing through the inspection unit 3 from the side. The shaft body A is inspected for the shaft length, the presence or absence of screw processing leakage, the head height, and the like.

  The determination circuit 5 converts the image photographed by the camera 3a into a black and white image, and determines whether the shaft A is good or not based on whether or not the ratio of the white image portion in the processed image to the whole is within a specified value. Do.

  In the continuous photographing by the camera 3a, the pulse position when the shaft A conveyed by the belt conveyor 2 passes through the inlet sensor 6 is read from the rotary encoder included in the belt conveyor 2, and the axis in the photographing region in the inspection unit 3 is read. Confirmed that the body A has moved.

  The pulse position when the shaft A conveyed by the belt conveyor 2 passes the inlet sensor 6 and the outlet sensor 7 is read from the rotary encoder, and the difference between the two pulse positions is set in advance. If it is off, the position of the shaft being transported is determined to have shifted in the middle, and the apparatus is stopped and the positional shift is corrected.

The two sets of air blow devices 8 and 9 separate the shaft body that has been judged good from the shaft body that has been judged good and blown in different directions.

  The non-defective product collection unit 10 is arranged in front of the exit of the belt conveyor 2, and the air blow device 8 is located at a position where the shaft body A that has been judged good toward the non-defective product collection unit 10 is blown horizontally from the back in the transport direction. Is provided.

  In addition, the defective product collection unit 11 is disposed immediately below the exit of the belt conveyor 2, and the air blowing device 9 blows down the shaft body A that has been judged to be defective toward the defective product collection unit 11 from above. In the position. In the illustrated inspection apparatus, the air blow device 9 is provided at a position where the shaft body A is blown from directly above to below, but the air blow device 9 blows air to the shaft body A from obliquely above. May be.

  The misclassification detection device 12 detects the presence / absence of passage of a shaft body to be sent to the defective product collection unit 11 and misclassification when the sensor 12a does not output a detection signal in a situation where the detection signal should be output. And a determination circuit 12b that issues a stop signal to the drive unit of the apparatus.

  The sensor 12a is provided in the middle of the path for moving the shaft body for defect determination. The sensor 12a is a band-shaped area sensor composed of a light projecting element Lp and a light receiving element Lr opposed to each other with the passage interposed therebetween, and the band-shaped area traverses the path and passes through the band-shaped area. The body A can be detected without omission.

  When the shaft body A, which has been determined to be defective in the inspection unit 3, moves to the vicinity of the exit of the belt conveyor, the air blowing device 9 is activated, and air for blowing is jetted downward.

  The shaft body A that has been determined to be defective by the air needs to be recovered by the defective product recovery unit 11. However, if the inspection speed is increased, the error is determined by a slight deviation in the timing of air injection and the inertia of the conveyance. The erroneous sorting in which the shaft A is collected by the non-defective product collecting unit 10 can be considered.

  If the misclassification occurs, the shaft body A that has been determined to be defective is not moved to the defective product collection unit 11, and thus the detection signal that should be output from the sensor 12a is not output.

  For this reason, the judgment circuit 12b makes a misclassification judgment, and a stop signal is output from the judgment circuit 12b to stop the apparatus.

  It is possible to know that such a situation has occurred, that is, the device has been stopped in a situation where the detection signal that should be output from the sensor 12a is not output, and that the erroneous separation has occurred. By re-inspecting all the products of the shaft body A, it is possible to reliably eliminate the mixing of defective products with respect to non-defective products.

  For this reason, it is possible to increase the inspection speed to be higher than the conventional upper limit speed set in consideration of safety.

  Since the shaft sorting inspection / separation apparatus 1 can adjust the distance between the pair of endless round belts 21R and 21L, the shaft sorting / separation apparatus 1 can be used for inspection sorting of several types of shaft bodies having different diameters.

  In the above description of the operation, the shaft body A is photographed from only one direction and inspected, but the camera is added so that the entire circumference of the shaft body A can be photographed. It is also conceivable to perform an appearance inspection of the entire circumference without rotating the shaft body A.

  The shaft body collected by the non-defective product collection unit 10 is preferably transferred to a storage container or the like periodically while the apparatus is operating normally. When this method is employed, the total number of shaft bodies that need to be re-inspected when misclassification occurs does not increase, and the time required for re-inspection is shortened.

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Inspection body sorting apparatus 2 Belt conveyor 21R, 21L Endless round belt 22 Travel drive mechanism 22a Drive pulley 22b, 22c Driven pulley 22d Controller 3 Test | inspection part 3a Camera 3b Backlight 4 Lighting fixture 5 Judgment circuit 6 Entrance sensor 7 Exit sensor 8, 9 Air blow device 10 Non-defective product collection unit 11 Defective product collection unit 12 Misclassification detection device 12a Sensor 12b Determination circuit Lp Light projecting element Lr Light receiving element 13 Fixed frame 14 Movable frame 15 Spacing adjustment mechanism A Shaft

Claims (4)

Each has a pair of left and right endless round belts (21R, 21L) that are spanned between a plurality of pulleys and driven to travel in the same direction, and the shaft body (A) to be inspected is connected to the shaft body. The head or outer flange is placed on the pair of endless round belts (21R, 21L), and the neck or body of the shaft (A) is sandwiched between the pair of endless round belts (21R, 21L). A belt conveyor (2) to be conveyed in a suspended state, an inspection part (3) provided in the middle of the length of the belt conveyor, a lighting device (4) disposed above the inspection part, and the inspection part ( 3) A determination circuit (5) for determining the quality of the shaft body (A) inspected based on the information from 3), and two sets of air blows with different air injection directions arranged at the outlet of the belt conveyor (2) Device (8, 9),
Based on the determination result of the determination circuit (5), the operating state of the two sets of air blow devices (8, 9) is switched, and the shaft body (A) for good determination is transferred to the non-defective product collection unit (10). A shaft body inspection / separation apparatus in which the shaft body (A) is blown into the defective product collection unit (11) with air,
One side (9) of the air blowing device is arranged in such a direction that the defective shaft body (A) is blown from the top to the bottom at the exit of the belt conveyor (2). An inspection / separation apparatus for a shaft body provided with an erroneous classification detection device (12) for detecting erroneous classification and stopping all operations of the apparatus when erroneous classification occurs.   The misclassification detection device (12) includes a sensor (12a) that detects whether or not the shaft body has passed in the middle of a path for moving the shaft body (A) that has been determined to be defective to the defective product collection unit (11). The shaft body inspection and separation device according to claim 1.   The light emitting element (Lp) and the light receiving element (Lr) which are opposed to each other with the sensor (12a) sandwiching the passage for moving the shaft body (A) determined to be defective to the defective product collecting unit (11). The inspection / sorting device for a shaft body according to claim 2, wherein the belt-shaped area sensor is configured as follows.   The shaft body inspection / separation apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 3, further comprising an interval adjusting mechanism (15) for adjusting an interval between a pair of endless round belts (21R, 21L) of the belt conveyor (2).

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